Sunday, August 3, 2008

Thoughts about SDCC 2008

I just paid my yearly visit to San Diego. The Comic-Con crowd is apparently the largest ever, estimated at 135,000 attendees (my guess is more). I've heard rumours that the Con might someday move to Vegas or LA if San Diego can't come up with a way to accomodate the increasing crowds, I hope this doesn't happen. In LA and Vegas there are all kinds of distractions, in San Diego we can focus on the Con.

I hate to say that I missed my chance to see Hugh Jackman, Gerard Butler, the Watchman panel, and all the other amazing treats the Hollywood studios shipped down to San Diego. The lines were so overwhelming that we pretty much gave up on Hall H throughout, worried that we would spend so much time in line that we would miss everything else.

For me, it’s the “everything else” that is the most interesting. So here’s a list of other events and panels that made this year’s Con, crazy as it was, an experience not to be missed.

At the top of my list are two of my favorite writers, Ray Bradbury and J. M. Stracznski. I’ve loved Ray since high school. He’s 88 now and still inspiring. At one point someone in the audience asked him how it felt to know that he inspired several generations of writers, and he looked out at us and said, “yes, you are all my bastard children, and I love you all.” JMS is definitely a bastard child of Ray B. As usual he began his session with a ten minute “state of JMS” talk and then spent the rest of his hour answering questions from the floor. Of particular interest to me were his stories about Babylon 5, as I'm a big fan and there were 6 people convincingly dressed up as cast members in the second row.

My most prized swag was a detailed storyboard from the first animated Avengers movie depicting Ultimate Thor, signed by Stan Lee. We also bought 6 new pages of original artwork; a Red Sonia page by Joyce Chin; an Ultimate Thor page by Greg Land (from the Ultimate Power series); 2 current Wonder Woman pages, one by Aaron Lopresti and one by Ron Randall. We also got 2 early Witchblade pages drawn by Michael Turner.

One of the saddest, yet sweetest events of the con was the tribute to Michael Turner. Against a backdrop of slides, his friends, fans and family got up and talked about what MT meant to them. Mark Silvestri told a funny story about MT first coming to Top Cow. MS asked MT to draw a building, he worked at it very earnestly and came back with something that looked “like a loaf of bread.” MS found a book of Manhattan architecture and said copy this. He worked at it earnestly and returned with a fabulous MT style drawing, saying “no one had ever told him it was ok to look at a picture before.” The rest is history. I still hope to include Turner’s work in the “Looney Lineage” show I’m co-curating in 2010, it would be an honor to have him.

It seemed like every sixth guy was dressed as the Joker this year. Oddly the one that looked the most like HL wasn’t at the Con, he was the host at the Hard Rock. It was really fun to see a crew set up a whole park full of clay warriors to promote the new Mummy movie across the street from the convention center.

Fillion also appeared on the DC animation panel, as he was the voice of Steve Trevor in the upcoming Wonder Woman movie – which looks great! Not so great was a panel on Hamlet 2. The clips looked fun, but the cast, producer and director looked stiff and uncomfortable. The movie was heavily promoted, with 5 or 6 guys dressed as “sexy Jesus” walking around the Con together. The panel was anticlimactic. Another disappointment was a panel featuring fantasy writer talking about folklore and mythological beings (angels, werewolves, etc…). Somehow the questions never seemed to get below the surface.

Being an art historian, I enjoyed many of the Comic Arts Conference panels organized by Peter Coogan. The best one I saw was on “Reinventing the Superhero” with presentations by Charles Hatfield (CSU-Northridge, writing about Kirby & Fantastic Four), Dana Anderson (Maine Maritime Academy, writing about the X-Men and lobbying for a character research database, and Seth Blazer (University of Florida, writing about the American public’s attraction to superheroes post- 9/11). Another treat, at the end of the day on Sunday, was the Deepak Chopra/Grant Morrison panel. Always focused on the BIG picture these two loosely talked about the spirituality of superheroes in our violent and confused world.

It was beautiful in San Diego, I actually managed to get out to see the Georgia O’Keeffe show at the San Diego Museum of Art and have some fabulous cucumber mojitos at the Prado restaurant. Other good drinks were had in the beautifully remodeled bar at the US Grant hotel. On the whole, a great trip.

About Me

Art historian, author, artist and researcher living in the
SF Bay Area. Emphasis on works on paper and exhibitions, in particular comic art, law
& pop culture and labor graphics (union labels). Owner of Neurotic Raven, which recently published On Reflection: the Art of Margaret Harrison and Dual Views: Labor Landmarks of San Francisco.